
Copyright ]^^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A GLIMPSE OF THE 
HEART OF CHINA 



A GLIMPSE OF THE 



HEART OF CHINA 



BY 

EDWARD C. PERKINS, M.D. 



ILL U STRA TED 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1911, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



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h 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 123 North Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 



)CI.A300526 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 

Mary Stone, M.D. . . . Frontispiece 

" With its two wings reaching out toward the gate " . 19 

" Quite a number of the patients came at the sum- 
mons of the bell " 45 ^ 

" Where medicines were given out over a counter " . 46 "^ 

"One could see the patients brighten as the doctor 

went her rounds " 62 

" Clever in handing instruments and foreseeing needs " 64 

" And many skillfully-performed operations " . .69 

" That devoted band of Christians " . . ; .84 

A door of hope . . . . • . .87 



This little sketch began as a letter, but 
grew very naturally into something of a 
more general character because of its sub- 
ject matter. It is hoped that it will be of 
interest not alone because of the capable, 
devoted and self-sacrificing woman of 
whom it gives an inadequate picture, but 
also because it would pass on a vision of 
the love of the Master. 

E. C. P. 

St. Luke's Hospital, 
New York City, April 4, 1911. 



I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Christian 
Herald, through whose courtesy I am using the picture of 
Dr. Stone that serves as the frontispiece. 

E. C. P. 



TO 

THE MEMBERS OF THE W. F. M. S. 

Who are so faithfully holding up the hands of their sisters 

abroad in their work for His Kingdom, this 

little book is respectfully inscribed. 



A Glimpse of the Heart 
of China 

THE smiling host of the Wagons 
Lits Terminal Hotel of Hankow 
bowed us out into the darkness 
outside, as we started in several rick- 
shaws, one or two of them carrying hand 
baggage, for the Bund. On the way we 
overtook and passed the coolies who were 
carrying our trunks — carrying them in the 
typical Chinese fashion, slung from a pole; 
and also, quite according to the custom of 
the place, to the monotonous and rather 
painful groaning, or grunting, such as one 
hears continually during the daytime — the 
first groan being given by the man in front, 
and that being echoed by the man behind, 
usually with some difference in key be- 
tween the groans. There Is truly nothing 
that is ludicrous, in spite of the novelty of 
this accompaniment to work, and one's re- 
9. 



lo A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

membrances of Hankow are colored In 
large part by this rather doleful melody of 
toil. Elsewhere we heard labor accom- 
panied by truly a monotonous but a more 
cheerful variety of sound, more akin to 
song. 

The boat was drawn up beside the wall 
which bounds the Bund and was the scene 
of much activity. There were but two 
foreign passengers in the first class, my 
mother and I, but there were crowds of 
travellers who were travelling after Chi- 
nese fashion, which meant being much 
more crowded, and I think, for the most 
part, providing their own food. One is 
struck in Chinese travel, both on train 
and boat, not so much by the terrible 
crowding of the native passengers as by 
the apparent courtesy, or at least resigna- 
tion, with which they submit to it. So far 
as we saw, there seemed to be a toleration 
which would scarcely be shown by the 
European or American public for any 
length of time. 

It seemed a little startling to be leav- 
ing for a voyage down the Yang Tze at 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 1 1 

9 P.M.^ but it was somewhat in keeping 
with the departure of other means of con- 
veyance in China, which, however, are 
more apt to leave at some early hour in 
the morning. 

The starlight was beautiful, and under 
it one could distinguish the great broad 
sweep of the Yang Tze reflecting the 
lights of some boats anchored in the 
stream, and later the lights of Hankow as 
we swung slowly out into the current and 
turned toward the East. 

We understood later why the start was 
made late in the evening, when the bright 
morning sunlight showed us the city of 
Kiukiang, with its Bund and its landing 
hulks, some of which are far out in the 
stream, and at which the vessels plying 
the Yang Tze stop to receive and dis- 
charge their passengers and cargo. 

The cause of our going to Kiukiang 
was a long-anticipated visit to Dr. Mary 
Stone, known to a great many people in 
the United States both personally and 
through one or two accounts of her life 
and work which have appeared in print. 



12 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

'Dr. Stone, for all her youthful ap- 
pearance, has had considerable experi- 
ence in all ways, though the home life from 
its start was that of a member of a Chris- 
tian family, her father having been the 
first convert of the Yang Tze Valley and 
having become a preacher of the Gospel. 
On this account, and also because her 
mother was a Christian, the parents re- 
fused to comply with the usual custom of 
deforming the feet of their daughters, as 
was the habit of all their neighbors, and 
so the "Little Doctor" was the first girl of 
Central China to escape those months of 
pain as a child, and the subsequent life- 
long inconvenience. She was taught by 
her parents in part, and also in the mis- 
sionary schools, coming to this country in 
1 890, and being graduated from the Medi- 
cal School of the University of Michigan 
at Ann Arbor in 1894, leading her class. 
On graduating, she returned to her coun- 
try to undertake the conduct of the Dan- 
forth Memorial Hospital. 

Dr. Stone had written that we should 
telegraph in advance in order that, as she 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 13 

expressed it, we might be "properly met." 
There was no one on the landing hulk, but 
this was at some distance from the shore 
and we thought probably some one would 
be over on the Bund when we reached 
there, so we took a sampan which carried 
us and our mound of luggage, and were 
sculled along over the rippling surface of 
the brown river which looked almost at- 
tractive under the bright sunlight of that 
October morning. We reached the shore 
and our luggage was deposited on the 
Bund, and a crowd of interested Chinese 
began to collect, but no familiar face ap- 
peared, nor any face that looked as if its 
owner recognized in us the possible friends 
of Dr. Stone. 

The gathering crowd appeared to be 
mostly made up of porters, and it began to 
close in around us in a circle which seemed 
to be respectful though inquisitive, but was 
a trifle disconcerting. It occurred to me 
just before we reached Kiukiang that I 
ought to have been armed with at least 
some approximation of Dr. Stone's name 
in Chinese, and when we stood there, sur- 



14 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

rounded by this group of porters to whom 
we could not speak, and realized that a 
search for a friend in a Chinese city, where 
not even the name was known, would be 
a matter of no small difficulty, the per- 
plexity seemed quite complete. There 
could not be, of course, many doctors in 
Kiukiang, so addressing the crowd rather 
broadly I said with a rising inflection, 
"Dai Fu," which in the Northern dialect 
means doctor, and then repeated it with 
an addition, "Stone Dai Fu," and then 
tried "Lady Dai Fu" and "Miss Dai Fu" 
in the hope that there might be some one 
at least who understood a word of Eng- 
lish. 

A look of great interest spread through 
the crowd, mingled with perplexity, and 
a policeman arrived on the scene and 
held the crowd back at a more re- 
spectful distance while I repeated my 
somewhat small repertoire to his no small 
mystification. It certainly was a situation 
that needed care to solve, and resembled 
the classical problem of the fox, the goose 
and the bag of corn. Of course, I did 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 15 

not wish to leave my mother in the middle 
of a crowd of Chinese in a perfectly 
strange city, nor did she wish to go off 
on an independent tour of exploration. It 
also was evident that it would be unwise 
to go off together and leave our baggage 
where it was, still more foolish would it 
be to sit on our baggage and wait indefi- 
nitely while the crowd increased, and yet 
more impossible was it for us to carry our 
luggage and, even had we been able, 
whither? 

I then saw to my great joy the word 
"Contractor" on a building nearby, and 
went over, to find a Chinese standing in the 
doorway to whom I repeated my efforts 
about the "Dai Fu," also to his perplexity. 
It might be stated that the nearest ap- 
proach to the word "Dai Fu" in the Cen- 
tral Mandarin is "Daw Fu," meaning a 
cook. No wonder the crowd had been 
mystified. Then I tried the word "hospi- 
tal" and "sick people" with my new 
acquaintance in the doorway, because 
he said he knew a word or two of 
English, answering my rather despairing 



i6 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

inquiry, and finally he said "Shii Ee 
Sen," and a couple of the porters, 
who had accompanied me on my lit- 
tle errand to the contractor's house, 
started back for the baggage, and the 
more energetic of them flung himself on 
all fours over the mound, feeling he was 
sure of the place where we wanted to go, 
and began to fight the other porters off 
and distribute the luggage piece by piece 
to his friends or relatives in the crowd. It 
approximated a free fight, but the energy 
and the persistence of this man won the 
day and, with one exception, he gave out 
the luggage pretty much as he pleased. 
We then started up a street which we 
later knew was in the Foreign Conces- 
sion outside the City Wall, a rather strag- 
gling procession of eight porters, my 
mother and myself. It was with a good 
many misgivings on my part that I fol- 
lowed the steps of our porters, not feel- 
ing at all sure that they knew where we 
wanted to go, but somewhere we were 
bound certainly, and with a mixture of 
alarm and interest we followed on, under 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 17 

the arch of the gate leading inside the city 
wall and then through such crowded, such 
narrow, such dirty and smelly streets ! 
The head of the procession disappeared 
around a curve at once, and my uneasi- 
ness increased with the thought that the 
luggage might easily disappear down side 
alleys without the possibility of ever trac- 
ing it. 

Such a strange combination, or suc- 
cession of smells and sights as that was! 
Fish were being washed, food was being 
sold, food was being eaten in the little 
open-fronted restaurants, burdens of all 
kinds were being carried, merchandise of 
all descriptions was being displayed for 
sale, and everywhere was the color blue 
as the predominant shade for the clothing 
of the crowds. I spent my time in going 
ahead of the procession, counting the 
pieces of baggage, and then coming back to 
encourage my mother who was bringing 
up the rear. No conveyance of any kind 
was to be seen, and though Kiukiang has 
some chairs resembling sedan chairs there 
were none in evidence, and there was noth- 



1 8 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

ing to do but to pursue the hurrying foot- 
steps of our porters, and indeed they did 
hurry after the fashion of the Chinese bur- 
den bearers, who feel quite truly that the 
quicker they reach their journey's end the 
quicker the load will be off their shoulders. 
We made two halts, one of them in a most 
unprepossessing place where a pond of 
dirty water suggested malaria and typhoid 
fever and seemed to be the home, or the 
particular environment, of a large and 
flourishing family of pigs. 

My mother was growing weary. We 
had gone for a mile and we seemed to be 
getting out of the city (at least out of 
the most crowded part), and my uneasi- 
ness was growing considerably with the 
thought that we were possibly getting 
farther from our real destination and also 
getting to a place where no welcome Eng- 
lish sight might meet one's eye. 

Some brief moments of rest and we re- 
sumed our march again, and turned a cor- 
ner leading up a small incline through 
rather an unpromising looking street or 
lane, where pigs and dogs seemed to own 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 19 

a considerable part of the thoroughfare, 
not to mention some rather untidy look- 
ing people; but over the top of some stone 
v/alls loomed the roofs of foreign style 
buildings, and I hastened back to encour- 
age my mother for the last effort with the 
report that we were nearly there. 

It was with a feeling of joy and of 
great relief we saw the front end of the 
procession turning into a gate in a wall 
bordering the lane, and we ourselves fol- 
lowed through the first archway and then 
through a round opening in the second 
wall at the far side of a kind of entrance 
vestibule, to find ourselves in a place so 
different that it was almost startling; and 
perhaps almost as much as the change 
which the eye saw there came, too, a 
change in one's feeling, a restfulness, a 
peacefulness, which we were not alone in 
feeling, but which has been noticed by 
others who have crossed the threshold into 
that oasis of the Heathen Desert. Di- 
rectly ahead a path led up to the gray 
front of the Hospital, with its two wings 
reaching out toward the gate, and on 



20 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

either side of the path was a row of bright 
colored chrysanthemums, for China as 
well as Japan is a land of the chrysanthe- 
mum. 

We were met at the Gate House by a 
very sweet-looking Chinese woman, who 
greeted my mother with little inarticulate 
exclamations of distress, and we were es- 
corted up to Dr. Stone's house. It ap- 
peared that Dr. Stone was not at home — 
had gone down to Nanking to the Annual 
Conference a day or two before, having 
started before the coming of the telegram 
which told of our proposed arrival. She 
had, however, conditionally ordered two 
chairs sent to the Bund, but we had failed 
to make connections with them, and the 
very attractive Chinese lady who met my 
mother was full of distress that she should 
have had the long walk up from the boat 
landing. She had a way of escorting my 
mother, holding her with her right hand 
under my mother's left elbow, and her left 
hand supporting her left wrist in a way 
which I fancy Is a customary one in show- 
ing respect to Chinese ladies whose bound 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 21 

feet make them often rather unsteady. I 
have heard of one Chinese woman who 
virtually never took a step alone, but al- 
ways leaned upon her maid, and, in gen- 
eral, it may be said that the women of 
greatest privilege have the smallest feet 
and are, therefore, the most In need of 
support. 

This lady, who greeted us, was Dr. 
Stone's sister-in-law, who spoke a little 
English and understood much more, but 
was rather timid about speaking at all with 
the feeling possibly that our ears would be 
offended by mistakes; but, with her Eng- 
lish, as with that of two or three others 
whom we learned to know at Kiukiang, 
the softness of Intonation and the sweet- 
ness of voice could not by any means make 
errors sound at all objectionable. On the 
contrary, I must confess to being not a 
little attracted by the odd order of words 
and the interesting changes of our custom- 
ary use of our language. 

The path to the doctor's ftome had led 
us around the East Wing of the Hospital, 
up a flight of steps, along a walk that was 



22 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

bordered on both sides by a lawn across 
which, at a little distance, began the flower 
garden of roses and chrysanthemums, 
quite a mass of blossoms, although the 
month would mean anything but such a 
display with us in America, to where be- 
fore us stood the gray building, the pres- 
ent — and a memorial present — to the 
Compound, the home of Dr. Stone and 
Miss Jennie V. Hughes. 

Before we reached the Compound the 
man who had successfully corralled our 
baggage had stopped to impress me with 
the fact that he was "No. i Boy," which 
words he knew, and therefore I inferred 
from gestures and a few rather inarticu- 
late phrases, that I was by no means to 
pay all the coolies alike, but to turn over 
the funds entirely to him and let him pay 
the rest with the "squeeze" for himself, 
according to the ordinary Chinese usages. 
There was quite a little doubt in my mind 
as to how much the porters ought to re- 
ceive. I was perfectly sure that they 
ought not to be given all they asked, and 
finally the amount which was paid, al- 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 23 

though less than they seemed to feel was 
necessary, made them go away in a state 
of great delight, and as we learned after- 
ward they received many times more than 
the usual few cents, the customary wage 
for carrying a load for so considerable a 
distance. 

Such an atmosphere of welcome as the 
house itself seemed to give ! Such a home- 
like place as it was — all of it ! We turned 
to the American side of the house (there 
being a Chinese side to the left of the 
front door), and came into a delightfully 
comfortable sitting room with a library 
seen through the large double doorway, 
and just here let me add parenthetically 
that the thought began to dawn on my mind 
that Vv^e were in the presence of the "Mis- 
sionary luxury" which one hears about in 
this country. If it is a confession, let me 
make it, that before the return of our 
hostess I took occasion to make something 
of a mental inventory of the furniture and 
ornaments, in order to be sure of my facts, 
and as I think one, who knew Dr. Stone 
better than I did then, would readily im- 



24 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

agine, the result was that I realized how 
perfectly fitting all the appointments of the 
home were — by no means luxurious — in- 
teresting because foreign to us, but not 
costly, and yet all arranged and placed 
with such a fine sense of the artistic, and 
the convenient, that it really gave the im- 
pression of a beautiful house. Those who 
come to know the many-sidedness of "The 
Little Doctor" will realize that quite over- 
shadowed as it is by more important and 
more beautiful characteristics, there is a 
true sense of the artistic, too, in her 
rounded character. 

We went upstairs to our rooms shortly. 
One could not help being delighted with 
it all. My mother's room looked out in 
one direction toward a venerable pagoda 
which was bushy with green growth, al- 
most from bottom to top, there being a 
particular mass of shrubbery on its top 
roof. 

My room looked out over the rose gar- 
den, across the Compound Wall on the far 
side of which lived an assorted family of 
pigs, and a little shanty which looked 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 25 

hardly nice enough for their home, but 
which in reality was the home of their 
owners. I recall seeing one of the pig 
family, one of the largest, disappearing 
into the house. I expected to see his im- 
mediate exit, but was disappointed. 

Nearby were trees, on a branch of one 
of which a man occasionally brought out a 
bird in a cage early in the morning and 
stood off to listen to it sing a melodious, 
liquid, forest-like song, some sort of 
thrush one might think. A fondness for 
birds is one of the noticeable traits of mas- 
culine China, and one sees many of the 
men in Peking carrying a bird cage and Its 
occupant as a man in England or America 
would take his dog as a companion. Be- 
yond this nearest menage were some low- 
lying roofs, and farther still quite a sharp 
rise of ground surmounted by what I took 
to be a little hilltop shrine. There was a 
constant ascent and descent to and from 
this little place, and it seemed to me that 
probably these were worshipers. It proved, 
however, that it was a kind of observa- 
tory, and that people who went to the top 



26 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

went there merely for the view. Quite as- 
tonishing again and rather revolutionary 
to one's ideas of the very matter-of-fact 
viewpoint that a Chinese has of the world. 

The following day, which was Sunday, 
there was a perfect crowd on the hilltop 
and some surrounding high ground all day. 
I watched them through a pair of field 
glasses, but could see no sign of worship, 
and fancied that It must be rather desul- 
tory. Just beyond this little observatory 
there was, though not as high as it, the 
gray battlements of the ancient City Wall 
and over the top and much farther away 
one saw the blue hills on the far side of 
the Yang Tze. 

The bed, placed somewhat in the mid- 
dle of the room, assigned to me, gave the 
impression of airiness and a rather sum- 
mery feeling, which was heightened by 
the white mosquito netting. This latter, 
even in November, was most important, 
and I must confess to a certain feeling of 
disquietude at seeing specimens of the 
mosquito family, the possible donors of an 
attack of malaria, resting on the walls. 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 27 

In another direction the windows looked 
across the pretty lawn to the hospital, 
which was quite close by, and on open- 
ing the shutters at night I always saw the 
subdued light in the hospital, and usually 
the dim form of one of the nurses going 
about on her ministrations to the sick, and 
it gave one the sensation of pleasure and 
gratitude to think of a needed work like 
that going on for twenty-four hours a day. 

Dr. Stone's sister-in-law soon withdrew, 
and we were left to unpack our things and 
to take possession, which was a pleasure, 
inasmuch as the house had such a home- 
like atmosphere, and we had been spend- 
ing so many days in cars and steamboats 
and hotels. 

An American lady of prominence who 
has visited widely in China is responsible 
for saying that Dr. Stone's house is the 
most homelike home she knows in that 
kingdom. Somehow the thoughtfulness 
and the winsomeness of our hostess 
seemed to anticipate our coming and be 
really an entity in the home almost as if 
we had an unseen hostess. 



28 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

Before very long the shy figures of two 
rather slight Chinese boys appeared, and 
in one of them I recognized, through pho- 
tographs sent to America, one of Dr. 
Stone's practically adopted boys, Mo Lin 
Wu. The house is the home of four boys, 
aged from seven, I should judge, that is, 
Wesley Mei to Leslie, the oldest, about 
thirteen. 

The personnel of the four brothers is 
interesting, and particularly interesting is 
the fact that from very different origin 
they are being brought up in a most har- 
monious manner, quite as if they were 
really brothers. From my observation, it 
seemed to me that there was less differ- 
ence of sentiment among them than is usu- 
ally the case in a family of boys. Luther 
Stone is the doctor's nephew, the son of 
a brother who died a number of years ago, 
and also the son of the head nurse in the 
hospital. Something there is about him 
which reflects the attractiveness of his 
mother. Wesley Mei is the son of a young 
widow, Mrs. Mei, who is one of the head 
teachers at the Knowles Bible Training 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 29 

School. This school is at present sepa- 
rated from the hospital by a considerable 
distance, but when they get into their new 
quarters it will be directly across the 
street. The mother, Mrs. Mei, has also 
a little girl who lives with her. She is so 
devoted to Christian work that she goes 
on patiently with her labors in Kiukiang 
for $5 a month, despite the fact that 
friends and neighbors have expostulated 
with her for not taking positions in the 
Government Schools. She has had offers 
which would mean very much more 
m.oney, but she gives these up to keep on 
with her distinctively Christian work; and 
the faith which believed that her work 
would be rewarded and that the children 
would be cared for has been Justified from 
the fact that one person is supporting the 
little Wesley now and another stands wait- 
ing to do so if necessary. 

Leslie, the oldest of the four, was a 
famine child, and came under Dr. Stone's 
care in a very lamentable condition, such 
a condition, in fact, as is rarely seen in 
this country, except by those who see the 



30 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

cases of marasmus which usually find their 
way to the hospitals. He Is now a sturdy 
boy and looks the most rugged of the four. 
Mo Lin Wu is related more distantly than 
Luther to the doctor. He is the most en- 
ergetic of the four and originates most of 
the plans and games. The doctor has 
wished their spending money to come to 
them In a way that would teach them 
something about, work, and so promised 
them a small copper coin for each pail of 
water which they would carry for the rose 
garden. It appears that the bright idea 
started In the head of Mo Lin to enlist 
the little girls of the girl's school In this 
financial enterprise, and they received one 
copper coin for every ten pails they car- 
ried, which left a handsome balance for 
this young contractor. Dr. Stone discov- 
ered this arrangement and the matter 
wore an altered complexion after that. 

About one o'clock the sound of some 
Chinese gongs, or rather bells, told us that 
lunch must be ready, and we went down to 
find the dining-room furnished with a high 
table, and two places set, and In one cor- 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 31 

ner of the room a small table with four 
small chairs and some three or four little 
bowls in the middle, while a bowl and two 
chopsticks marked the places of the four 
youngsters. The latter, who were already 
seated, were waiting in respectful silence, 
probably, as I supposed, for some one to 
say grace, and after that they started to 
eat their rice and some other food, partly 
fish, which was contained in the central 
bowls. At intervals, one or the other rose 
from his seat and disappeared through the 
door leading to the back hall, which we 
later learned was on the road toward the 
kitchen below, where the small bowls of 
rice were refilled and brought back in tri- 
umph to be flavored with the fish and 
sauce in the other bowls. 

We could not talk with the very 
thoughtful and efficient Chinese waiter 
who looked a model of politeness and 
friendliness, nor could we talk with the 
boys, for it was not for several days that 
we learned how well they understood Eng- 
lish, and my mother recalled the fairy 
story of the traveller who wandered 



32 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

through a forest to find an enchanted cas- 
tle where he was waited on by invisible 
servants, no part of whom might be seen 
except their hands. It seemed almost like 
a house of hospitality with only the hands 
to help. The dining-room has in it some 
interesting china, Kiukiang being the 
home of some kinds of pottery and porce- 
lain, and these being the presents of some 
grateful patients, I presume, give a very 
pretty effect to the sunny room. 

The library, which adjoins the dining- 
room, has quite a number of English 
books, and not the least of the collection 
are a number of shelves of up-to-date 
medical books, given by the late Dr. Dan- 
forth, of Chicago, added to from time to 
time as new works have come out. To me, 
that was a source of great delight, and I 
anticipated an unbroken chance to study, 
as it did not seem to me likely that there 
could be very much in a practical way to 
be done to help our hostess when she 
should return. 

Somewhere along the middle of the af- 
ternoon Dr. Stone's sister-in-law knocked 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 33 

at my door, and, after some difficulty, I 
made out that she would be much obliged 
if I would go over to the hospital to see a 
patient. The mixture of English, with its 
interesting accent, together with an effort 
to be most courteous, had the result of 
placing the words in a singular mosaic, so 
that I really was not sure what was 
wanted, but finally realizing that I was 
asked to the hospital, I followed with 
mingled feelings, including very promi- 
nently one of alarm at the thought of see- 
ing a patient who could not speak English, 
and who might have something very disas- 
trous the matter with him, and, along with 
this, was a sense of exhilaration at the 
thought of really being on the threshold 
of something like medical missionary 
work. 

We walked through the long hall- 
way which traverses the main building of 
the hospital, and out of a door at the other 
end into a small side court, where the 
building stands that serves as their isola- 
tion ward. There were no contagious 
cases in it during our stay at Kiukiang, 



34 ^ Glimpse of the Heart of China 

and, under such circumstances, it is used 
for some of the students of the William 
Nast College, inasmuch as men could not 
well be admitted to the hospital proper. 

I followed my guide into a room and 
saw a young fellow lying in bed with his 
head bandaged, leaving little more than 
the eyes exposed. Of course, it was evi- 
dently a surgical case, and I was shown 
some water and soap and a towel was 
brought for me to scrub up. My thought 
ranged around vaguely for a necessary 
antiseptic, but I supposed that their tech- 
nique did not feel the need of bichloride of 
mercury, and so, after a good scrub of 
soap and water, I started to examine the 
patient. My dismay was complete when 
a moment later the head nurse, Mrs. 
Stone, arrived with a basin of bichloride, 
and, in fact, this so disconcerted the visit- 
ing physician that he almost forgot all the 
surgery he had ever heard of, and was 
simply covered with mortification. 

The case was one of an infection of 
the lower maxilliary region, but an exami- 
nation both there and inside the mouth 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 35 

showed no treatment necessary other than 
the incisions and iodoform dressings that 
had already been in place. The infection 
had somewhat invaded the left eye, and 
that was a little the better for the washing 
out with boracic acid, which it received. 
However, the case was doing well, and 
the dressings were put on again, with the 
statement that things seemed to be going 
favorably. But the visiting physician re- 
tired in much confusion, and confided to 
his sympathizing relative in the house that 
all chances of future usefulness in the hos- 
pital were gone for good and all, and that 
an impression had, without doubt, been 
left that he had never seen anything in the 
line of surgical technique. 

Great was his joy, however, later in 
the afternon to have the same courteous 
and somewhat ambiguous invitation to go 
to the hospital again, this time to see a 
little child about 10 days along in tubercu- 
lous meningitis. The mother was there, 
such an anxious-looking mother as she was, 
too, but, of course, it seemed best to tell 
her at once that the case was a very se- 



36 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

vere one, and In the light of the probable 
diagnosis was also to be a fatal one. I 
advised her, through the interpretation of 
the head nurse, to keep the child in the 
hospital for a while, however, until we 
could be more certain, feeling the added 
responsibility of its being somebody else's 
hospital, and yet wishing her not to feel 
that the child's death was the fault of the 
treatment there, because the place is a wit- 
ness for Christ. 

On returning to the house I found my 
mother receiving a call from two very at- 
tractive Chinese ladies, who It appeared 
were the two heads of the Knowles Bible 
Training School, and whose names were 
Mrs. Mel and Mrs. Lan. They under- 
stand English quite well, and speak quite 
intelligibly, too, and they were asking my 
mother to speak at the Sunday School 
service the following day, a privilege 
which was finally delegated to me. It 
should have been mentioned that at 4:30 
the bells rang downstairs again, and we 
went down to find the table set with af- 
ternoon tea, a meal in which the small 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 37 

boys habitually did not share, or, after 
the return of Dr. Stone, shared in a rather 
desultory manner with nibbles of cake or 
cookies. 

In the home, at the head of the stairs, 
is a square upper hall, and a desk where 
two people may sit, one on either side. 
This desk later was associated in my mind 
with visions of the Little Doctor sitting 
writing and writing after midnight to 
friends in America, and also a sort of a 
nightly council of war held with her on 
matters medical, cases visited and treated 
during the day, which the rushing hours 
of the working time prevented from being 
fully talked over earlier, and, indeed, that 
council came to be one of the pleasantest 
features of the day. But on this first Sat- 
urday evening it was there that my mother 
and I drifted quite naturally to read and 
write with a lamp standing between. 

Sunday dawned, and with it there came 
a wish to go to the morning service, but 
the question was — where? I started out 
to find some church, feeling sure that there 
must be one somewhere, and, by good for- 



38 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

tune, met Dr. Stone's sister-in-law, who 
was in a chair with two chair coolies as 
porters, going to a maternity case. I tried 
to follow some people whom she indicated 
as on their way to the church, but these, 
being two ladies and a girl, seemed to feel 
that I ought to walk in front, which I was 
rather loth to do, because I didn't know 
the way. However, at each turn, I looked 
back to receive the direction by the wave 
of the hand, and finally reached the 
church which it appeared was largely for 
the Rulison School for girls and the Will- 
iam Nast College for boys and young men. 
Few audiences one could imagine are 
so inspiring to face as the audience of that 
church with its four or five hundred boys 
and girls, the boys and young men being 
to the right as one faces the church and the 
girls to the left, and the students of the 
Knowles Bible Training School mostly in 
the gallery at the end of the church. The 
missionaries were almost entirely away at 
conference at Nanking, and the sermon of 
the morning was preached by one of the 
professors, a Mr. Tsai, who is a devoted 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 5^" 

and consecrated Christian, and one of 
the native teachers having, I think as a 
specialty the subject of mathematics. 
Doubtless he cannot confine himself to that 
subject as the exigencies of missionary 
work require some versatility. Dr. Isaac 
Headland, on being asked during his last 
visit to America, what chair he occupied 
in the Peking University replied, "Chair! 
Why, I have a whole bench." 

About noon on Sunday the comparative 
calm of the lane outside the hospital 
grounds was sharply broken by the sound 
of an approaching storm of firecrackers. 
We listened for some moments in surprise 
and doubt, and then concluded that possi- 
bly the Little Doctor was returning home. 
She has been escorted back to the hospital 
in this way, so that we felt quite sure that 
her arrival was being announced, but 
when we reached the gate house and en- 
tered the atmosphere heavy with smoke 
and an odor reminding one of our own In- 
dependence Day we learned that it was 
one of the nurses who was returning from 
a maternity case. It appeared that a lit- 



40 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

tie boy had arrived in the family and that 
the friends and relatives were so pleased 
that they had escorted the nurse all the 
way home in order to show their apprecia- 
tion. 

It is needless to say that had the arrival 
in the family been a daughter no such 
demonstration would have marked her ad- 
vent. We, of the Western World, are 
more or less perplexed at the very great 
contrast of feeling which there is in the 
minds of parents between their boys and 
their girls, and the many instances, which 
seem so terrible in our sight, of the doing 
away with the little girl babies by expos- 
ing them in the road or throwing them into 
some pond, which is constantly done. 

The matter of such a contrast is not 
so hard to grasp, however, when one 
of the fundamental beliefs of the Chinese 
is understood. This may be styled a re- 
ligious belief, inasmuch as it takes hold 
of the world of the unseen, and is con- 
nected with their worship. 

Their thought is that they who pass on 
into the spirit world are fed and clothed 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 41 

by donations from this. In other words, 
that the unseen is dependent upon the seen 
rather than vice versa. So every one who 
goes out Into that unknown country be- 
lieves that he must receive offerings of 
food and offerings of clothes from people 
who either live or shall live. The only 
one rightfully to present these offerings as 
the priest of the family is one of the male 
decendants, and those who leave no male 
decendants behind can expect to be noth- 
ing but mendicants forever and ever in 
the spirit world — a desolate outlook in- 
deed — and one can scarcely be surprised 
that with this belief firmly In mind the 
wish of all hearts is to be represented by 
a son or as many sons as possible. It is 
further true that the girls will very literally 
belong to another family upon their mar- 
riage. 

One sees almost constantly the stores 
where articles are sold for the benefit of 
those who are supplying the needs of their 
relatives in the land of shades ; and In these 
shops the long strings of small hollow 
pasteboard boxes covered with gold and 



42 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

silver paper hang from the ceiling in rows 
quite bewildering to the uninitiated, and 
one may see at times some man travelling 
homeward with quite an armful of these 
pasteboard boxes and paper money and 
clothing which he purposes to burn. The 
clothes which are thus introduced into the 
world of the unseen are pieces of paper 
with a printed pattern on them which, 
when burnt, are believed to turn into beau- 
tiful and attractive brocades in the other 
world. In the case of royalty, and doubt- 
less with people of rank, the offerings are 
of real silk and other articles; the funeral 
of the late Empress Dowager having been 
the occasion of the burning of a vast 
quantity of valuable silks, etc. But by far 
the great proportion of these offerings 
which are made are merely an imitation of 
what the presents are supposed to become 
later. 

The offerings of food are also of two 
kinds — there may be the presentation at 
the graves or before the ancestral tablets 
of real articles of diet, or there may be 
merely imitation ducks or pigs which are 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 43 

rented for the occasion or left for some 
hours at the grave. The offering of the 
real food is, I believe, much more common 
than the burning of real clothing, inasmuch 
as the shades of the departed are supposed 
to only take some sort of spiritual nourish- 
ment from the food which does not in the 
least prevent its value to the family later 
on. 

And so it comes about that the girl ba- 
bies early begin to realize that their posi- 
tion is not at all on the same level as that 
of their brothers, 

Sunday school came early in the after- 
noon, and the evening service somewhere 
along 7 o'clock, there being a service 
down in the Foreign Concession at 6 
o'clock, to which I went with two or three 
of the missionaries who were not in Nan- 
king. The sermon there was preached by 
a man who belongs to the China Inland 
Mission, and whose income is something 
like 200,000 pounds a year, and yet his 
own life is on so simple and frugal a plan 
that he makes his journeys in the uncer- 
tain weather, hot and cold, of China, on 



44 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

foot from place to place so as to help set 
a standard and help maintain a simplicity 
of life for the native preachers. 

Evening came again, after a day which 
seemed much shorter than the previous 
one, although by no means devoid of inci- 
dent and blessing, and again my mother 
and I sat in the upper hall at the two-sided 
desk. It must have been lo o'clock, and 
the house was very quiet, the brothers 
having crept away to bed, when all at 
once there was a scurry of feet on the 
stairs and, smiling joyfully, our hostess ar- 
rived. She had taken the first boat back 
from Nanking on the receipt of a telegram 
telling of our arrival. Such a pleasant, 
such a delightful, meeting as that was. 
We talked and we laughed and we ex- 
changed experiences at once, and all things 
were much to her amusement, and so the 
living in almost a stranger's home in a 
more strange land came to an end, and 
we felt the actual presence of the most 
thoughtful, the most gracious, hostess. 

The following morning the bells rang 
again for breakfast, and we went down to 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 45 

feel the house under command of its mis- 
tress again, and the breakfast began with 
John Wesley's grace: 

"Be present at our table, Lord, 
Be here and everywhere adored. 
These mercies bless, and grant that we. 
May feast in Paradise with Thee. 

Amen." 

in which the small boys at the little side 
table joined. The hostess of the home 
speaks beautiful English, idiomatic and 
correct. 

After breakfast we went over to the 
hospital and attended the morning pray- 
ers, which service was announced by the 
somewhat penetrating sounds of a gong 
which hangs in the doorway of the room 
that serves as chapel and as the dispen- 
sary waiting room. Quite a number of 
the patients come at the summons of the 
bell, and the front bench was occupied by 
a row of very bright appearing and very 
neat looking nurses, dressed in blue. 

It was an interesting sight, the evi- 
dences of sickness in the way of bandages 
and expression were plainly to be seen; 



46 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

but the Bible and the singing of the hymns, 
the organ being played by the "Little Doc- 
tor," and the prayer, and something of an 
address, were all attentively listened to 
and joined in, and the whole impression 
was one of uplift. Some of the dispensary 
patients had already arrived, and after 
prayers on that morning, as on others, one 
could see the "Little Doctor," with her 
rapid diagnosis and directions for treat- 
ment, with the writing of prescriptions, 
working busily in the treatment room, 
from which the patients emerged to go di- 
rectly across the hall to the drug room, 
where medicines were given out over a 
counter. 

Dr. Stone's work is so arduous in just 
taking care of the women and children that 
it is impossible to think of caring for 
men, with the exception of an occasional 
student from the college, and yet they 
come, and, in cases that can be treated, are 
not turned away. That morning a man 
arrived who had a double pterygium. We 
had a look at him out on the hospital 
porch, and the "Little Doctor" turned to 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 47 

me in a quick way she has, and asked, 
"Will you do it?" This was like lightning 
out of a clear sky, and the visiting physi- 
cian, with a few pages of text books, but 
little experience behind him, felt almost 
weak in the knees, as he replied that he 
would if the doctor in charge would be 
present at the operation. The man was 
told that he was to be "operated," and he 
showed his joy and gratitude in no uncer- 
tain gestures and expressions, and the vis- 
iting physician felt more like a murderer 
in disguise than anything else, and read up 
with some trepidation and with great in- 
tensity two operations for removing ptery- 
gia as set forth in a surgery in Dr. Stone's 
library, and, incidentally be it said, found 
it difficult to sleep during the night which 
intervened between the promise and the 
operation. The man was told to wait at 
the gate house, and subsequent to the op- 
eration was lodged and cared for there, 
evidently much to his satisfaction, and 
there he made a good recovery, Dr. Stone 
having assisted at the operation. 

The atmosphere of the whole Com- 



48 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

pound, from the Gate House to the In- 
ner Shrine (which we would suggest as 
the "Little Doctor's" own heart) is a 
place of consecration, and every part of it 
provides its missions of helpfulness. In 
the basement of the home was a little 
schoolroom with twelve small desks and a 
teacher's platform and desk, and in this 
the four brothers and some six or 
eight other boys who live in the Com- 
pound, and whose parents are em- 
ployed in one way or another in the 
hospital work, go to school. It hap- 
pened that the teacher was sick at the 
date of our visit and the scholars, al- 
though having good intentions and stay- 
ing in the schoolroom part of the time, 
quite teacherless, trying to keep busy were 
really having a prolonged holiday, and at 
most hours of the day might be seen play- 
ing about the garden or on the southeast 
porch of the hospital. 

Farther to the rear in another part of 
the basement in a storerom is the play 
place of the four brothers, and each has 
there a little Impromptu house made out 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 49 

of pieces of wood and boards, picked up 
who knows where. These little houses are 
the home of much joy and delight and the 
resource of rainy days. Each one of the 
brothers has his own little house in which 
are scraps of pictures pinned up, and 
chipped cups and saucers, etc., etc., a med- 
ley of small treasures and curiosities with 
the possibility of a large element of the 
make believe. Some one has recently writ- 
ten about the modern toys for children, the 
mechanical toys that are beyond the under- 
standing of their owners, comparing these 
with the coach made out of two chairs, or 
the train made of blocks where the proud 
proprietor is the owner and engineer, the 
driver and the fireman, the conductor and 
the passenger and motive force all in one, 
with the most delightful range of fancy 
and freedom of thought; whereas the me- 
chanical toy leaves him but a little child 
in the midst of the hearth rug. Certainly, 
these Chinese boys each have a most ideal 
playhouse and many an hour is spent 
there. 

Speaking of schools there is also a lit- 



50 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

tie girls' day school near the Compound 
wall which had upwards of 30 scholars 
while we were there. I counted upon one 
occasion 33. The walls of this school are 
hung with some of the Berean Sunday 
School lesson pictures and have also a 
blackboard or two. The teacher is a very 
sweet-faced Christian woman who appar- 
ently has not much difficulty in the way of 
discipline. Beside her own desk on the 
platform there stood a little basket some- 
thing like a small clothes basket and in this 
her little baby lay. I do not recall having 
heard the child cry. It is probably a sort 
of a model little Chinese baby, and appar- 
ently the girls are not like the scholars at 
Mary's School, who were made to laugh 
and play. 

Without looking forward to the future 
this school to-day sends out many lines of 
influence. Dr. Stone told us of a little 
scholar of the school, who came to school 
for a number of days in tears. Her teacher 
asked her what the trouble was, and had as 
a reply that her father had beaten her. On 
being asked why he had beaten her she 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 51 

replied it was because she tried to tell him 
about Jesus, and so the teacher told her 
that if she could not tell about Jesus at 
least she could "live Jesus," and that the 
thing for her to do was to be so bright 
around the house and so ready to run er- 
rands that she would be witnessing all the 
same. It was only two or three weeks be- 
fore her father said to her one day, "Come 
here little girl. What has happened? You 
are so different now from the way you used 
to be." The child replied timidly, "But 
you won't let me tell you." "Yes, I will," 
he answered. "I want to know all about 
it" ; and so her longed-for opportunity 
came. Who shall measure the influence of 
the children who go from the day school 
with their knowledge of a living God into 
those places which, with apology, we 
might call homes. If one may judge at 
all by the appointments of a Chinese home 
there must be but little home life. 

On one of the days of our stay in Kiu- 
kiang a woman came to the hospital to 
ask that some one might go down and see 
her son, who was ill. Dr. Stone being 



52 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

very busy I took the call and followed 
the woman down the roadway outside the 
hospital Compound, the big alley which 
had become quite familiar by this time, and 
turned off not far from the hospital, going 
through a gate and then through a series 
of little passages or hallways or courts, or 
rooms, round corners and through door- 
ways in a manner that was perfectly be- 
wildering, and more than that, gave one 
the impression of a bad dream, for one 
could not tell whether he was out of doors 
or in a house. We passed numberless 
people. One place which seemed to be part 
of a court had in it some men who were 
weaving, and in another place there were 
some men who were having a meal to- 
gether, although it did not seem to be any 
particular meal hour, and these stared at 
us curiously, and at last, without any door- 
way, but coming under a covered place, we 
turned a corner, and the sick room, if it 
might be called that, was before us. The 
bed was most unsanitary, being set into the 
wall. The place was dark at best, and two 
curtains which hung before the bed made 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 53 

it darker yet inside, so that I went to the 
wrong end of the bed to find the patient. 
On turning around I noticed that the place 
where we were, which could scarcely be 
called a room, was full of an interested 
but respectful crowd. On one side was a 
window largely of paper, with a little 
square of glass in the middle, and through 
this one could see the faces of a number 
of people besides who could not perhaps 
get a good view inside the room. The pa- 
tient was very ill. It proved to be a case 
of advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, and 
the little medicine case which I had 
brought had nothing in it which could be 
of service there. The crowd wanted to be 
useful evidently, and there being many of 
them I found that I could communicate 
with the sick man through them. I turned 
to them and breathed deeply, and pointed 
to the patient who was now sitting on the 
edge of the bed, and they told him that I 
wanted him to breathe deeply, too, for the 
purposes of an examination. 

During the examination I was so un- 
guarded as to sit for a few moments on 



54 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

the edge of the bed, and on rising was 
brushed by a S)nTipathizing member of the 
crowd in order to remove one or two little 
visitors who had fastened themselves on 
my clothes, and, it might be added paren- 
thetically, that the visiting physician re- 
turned with all kinds of forebodings and 
sensations of alarm and fear, at the 
thought that he might bring into that 
charming home some souvenirs of the oc- 
casion. The crowd were informed by 
signs that there was nothing in the medi- 
cine case for the man, and an effort made 
to make them understand that the mother 
of the sick man was to return with me to 
the hospital in order to get some medicine 
there. 

As it happened I was equipped with 
about six Chinese words, two being "tong 
ba," the former meaning pain, and the lat- 
ter being spoken with a rising inflection, 
probably a kind of an audible question 
mark; the words ^^kaischway" which 
meant hot water, which phrase was useful 
in getting some water for washing the 
thermometer, and the name of Dr. Stone 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China '55 

in Chinese. This last phrase was employed 
in a general way to signify the hospital 
and that a return thither was necessary, 
but the crowd misunderstood it to mean 
that I wanted the "Little Doctor" called 
in on consultation, and a swift messenger 
was started for the hospital, but called 
back and detained while the efforts to in- 
duce the mother to go with me to the 
Compound were resumed. The crowd was 
confused, the mother was perplexed, evi- 
dently my sign language had broken down, 
and my very vigorous beckoning to the 
mother seemed to convey no idea at all. 
No wonder! When one wishes a person 
to follow them or come to them one uses 
a sign which with us means a farewell, a 
shaking of the hand as children say 
"good-bye." At last, however, the matter 
was cleared up, and the woman came along 
to the hospital to receive something that 
would make the last days of her son less 
suffering. 

A good many of the "Little Doctor's" 
calls for help outside of her hospital and 
dispensary practice are in maternity cases. 



^6 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

She told of a man who came one dark, 
rainy night and asked her to go across the 
Yang Tze and six li (two miles) into the 
country to where his wife lay ill. It ap- 
peared that the case had been in need of 
medical aid for four days, and surely the 
horror of cases like this, cases that are 
impossible to the native efforts, should 
make us of the Occident stop and think, 
and remember the terrible hours of pain 
and the hopelessness and helplessness of 
the situation for all concerned. The man 
who came to Dr. Stone went down on his 
knees In Chinese fashion, and, not on that 
account, but on the Lord's account, the 
"Little Doctor" said that she would go. 
She took one of her nurses with her, and 
the two chairs, with their chair coolies, 
started on their long trip. One should not 
fancy the streets of Kiukiang as lighted 
by electricity or street lamps. In fact, to 
find one's way home from a nearby place 
without a lantern would be almost impos- 
sible, except to one who was entirely fa- 
miliar with every step of the ground, and 
the little lanterns which the chairs carry 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 57 

throw but a dim light into the surround- 
ing darkness, and one should not fancy 
either the Yang Tze as a river easily 
crossed and recrossed by ferries, for its 
broad stream is neither spanned by 
bridges nor crossed by anything like an 
American ferry service at or near Kiu- 
kiang. 

The party went their six li into the coun- 
try, and the man began encouraging them 
by saying, "Almost at the place — just 
there," etc. The party pushed on ten li, 
and the man kept reassuring them with re- 
marks of the above nature. Fifteen li 
they went, then twenty. The chair coolies 
began to grow cross. They slipped in the 
mxud, the rain was falling, and it was dark ; 
twenty-five and thirty li they went, still the 
man assured them that they had almost 
reached his home, then thirty-five, and the 
man's assurances were as confident as ever, 
and at last, at the end of forty li, through 
the dark night and over such paths as we 
should scarcely want to travel here in this 
country by day, they reached the home of 
helplessness. 



58 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

The woman who had come In to lend 
the best of her aid had Infected eyes that 
were running with pus, and the house was 
full of the neighbors — full of men. Dr. 
Stone had to be firm in demanding that the 
helpers' services should be at once dis- 
pensed with, and then she insisted that the 
visitors should withdraw, which they de- 
clined to do. The house owner was afraid 
— they were his neighbors, and might 
prove ugly afterward. They even sat up 
under the rafters of the house. Dr. Stone 
washed her hands preparatory to work, 
and then turned to the audience and said 
very firmly, "I have begged you to get out, 
and I have told you to get out, and now If 
you don't get out (this accompanied by an 
appropriate gesture) I am going to splash 
this all over you." This had a magical 
effect, they almost fell over one another In 
making their escape through the door, 
very likely feeling that some sort of spell 
would accompany the process. The doc- 
tor then relieved the situation and saved 
the woman's life, and, since there were 
none of the neighbors as witnesses, the 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 59 

story spread abroad that she cut the wom- 
an all to pieces, and then sewed her all to- 
gether again. 

The intrepid Little Doctor and her 
nurse then started on their long journey 
home. Of course, the expedition had oc- 
cupied much more time than had been an- 
ticipated, and the lanterns which were on 
her chair and that of her nurse had been 
used for light at the operation, so that 
before they got back to the Yang Tze 
again the lanterns went out and they were 
left in pitch black darkness. Further ad- 
vance was impossible. The chair coolies 
spied nearby a little hut which proved to 
be a pig-pen, and they crawled in and 
pulled down the straw over them and slept 
with the pigs all night, while the Little 
Doctor and her nurse leaned up against the 
sides of their chairs and caught what rest 
they might till dawn, when they could pro- 
ceed on their journey again. 

The cases which came to the dispensary 
were sorely in need of help. This was, I 
think, the invariable rule. Such cases they 
were as do not often come to the observ- 



6o A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

ance of physicians in this country, and 
some familiarity with the dispensaries of 
four of the large hospitals in New York 
City has almost failed to show such need 
as the Little Doctor sees continually. 

One small boy was brought whose hands 
and some areas on his body were in a pit- 
iable condition. He had suffered from 
some severe burns, and the family, in their 
effort to do the best thing for him, had 
made a mixture of oil and ashes which 
was perfectly black, and which had been 
liberally smeared over the body and hands 
so that the hands were almost as black as 
a coal except where pus and blood were 
dripping out. It might be said, with due 
justice that ashes and oil are not nearly so 
bad as some other modes of native treat- 
ment, although rather bad enough from 
our viewpoint. It was quite astonishing 
to see what a more enlightened treatment 
could do even In twenty-four hours, and 
the condition of things the next day was 
surprisingly good. 

One child, I recall, had a head that was 
almost one mass of sores, not entirely ex- 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 6i 

cepting the face. One man, who called 
rather contrary to the understanding of 
the dispensary, but in great need, had 
been attacked outside the city by some 
feline which he called a tiger, and very 
possibly it was a tiger, for we heard the 
mountains within sight of the Little Doc- 
tor's residence are inhabited by these ani- 
mals. He had some bad lacerations of 
his scalp, due probably to the teeth of the 
animal. One of these long furrows 
reached to the corner of his right eye and 
he had only narrowly escaped having that 
torn out. I counted twenty claw marks on 
his left arm. A friend had come to his 
assistance and killed the beast, and then he 
had waited for nine days before coming 
to the dispensary, so that there was a 
very extensive infection of the scalp 
wounds. 

In the Dispensary waiting-room, which 
serves as a chapel for the morning serv- 
ice, the waiting crowd is addressed or per- 
haps usually talked with more familiarly 
by one or more of the four Bible women 
who are in constant attendance on the work 



62 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

of the hospital. One of these is the Lit- 
tle Doctor's earnest and enthusiastic 
mother whose story of rightful ambition 
to learn to read Chinese, although a 
grown woman at the time of her begin- 
ning the work, has appeared in print be- 
fore, and perhaps needs no repetition 
here, but her ambition now and daily ef- 
fort is to learn English in order to help 
her grandson, Luther, and the other 
"brothers" whom Dr. Stone has as her 
children in her home. 

The nurses, too, are strongly evangelis- 
tic in their thought and effort, and even 
to one who could not understand the lan- 
guage the atmosphere of Christian har- 
mony and the remarkable lack of friction 
in a place so busy and so continuously full 
of problems was very noticeable. One 
could see the patients brighten as the Doc- 
tor went her rounds, and somewhat the 
same temper characterizes the lives of her 
20 nurses who rejoice exceedingly over pa- 
tients who become Christians in the hos- 
pital, and who take an active part in the 
chapel service. These 20 nurses have 




}^ 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 63 

been trained by the Doctor herself, and 
one small room off the dispensary treat- 
ment room has a bench in it where some 
of them gather when the Doctor has a few 
moments that are less crowded than the 
few moments that precede and follow 
them, and where she teaches them the nec- 
essaries of anatomy and treatment. 

Her sister-in-law, the head nurse, is 
very efficient, and possesses, among other 
things, a rather peculiar charm of manner 
and winning power that must make her ac- 
ceptable to everyone of the other 19 
nurses. One can feel, not only in contact 
with her one's self, but in seeing her rela- 
tionship with the others, that she has a 
temperament which seems wholly unruf- 
fled by impatience and apparently never 
at a loss to know what to do. 

The head operating nurse, a Miss 

T , is a young girl of about twenty, 

who is not only clever in handing instru- 
ments and foreseeing needs, but is also a 
most devoted helper and faithful and re- 
liable attendant on the critical cases. Dr. 
Stone said that she gave her most severe 



64 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

cases to Miss T , who seldom failed to 

nurse them back to health again. 

Miss T 's temperament is buoyant 

and also noticeably spiritual. It appears, 
that through no fault of her own and 
doubtless without any consent of her own, 
she was engaged to a young man before 
she became a Christian. When she was 
converted and had a new view of life she 
longed to have him see things as she did 
and for him to have the opportunities for 
an education which she had. When one 
considers that Dr. Stone receives $450 a 
year as salary one can imagine that the 
nurses of her hospital cannot receive very 
much, and this brave girl began saving 
her coppers to put them together that they 
might spell out for this young man a 
chance for an education. Perhaps few 
know what ambitious self-denial can do, 
and the young man was duly installed at 
the William Nast College with this con- 
tinuous brave effort in the background to 
keep him there; but he did not learn with 
interest, and one surmises that he was kept 
in the college because the faculty knew of 




'clever in handling instruments and foreseeing needs' 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 65 

the struggle which was going on in his be- 
half. Intemperance had also a part in his 
life, I believe. At last, after some rather 
discouraging months, he came to her and 
said that the food at the college was not 
good and that he wanted her to give him 
more money so that he might have some 
extras which most of the other young men 
did not have. At this juncture some 

friends of Miss T stepped in and the 

engagement was broken, and, of course, 
we of the Occident should remember that 
the affair had not considered her assent in 
the first place. 

With the same devotion Miss T is, 

at present, helping two of her brothers 
who are in the William Nast College. The 
older one is an exceedingly handsome 
young man with hair that is not straight, 
as is most of the hair in China, but is 
somewhat wavy, and a face, which like 
Miss T 's own, has a power of light- 
ing up in a way that is almost the unmistak- 
able mark of the Christlike life in the 
heart. He and his younger brother have 
scholarships in the College, but the rest 



66 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

must come from their sister; their books 
and their clothing and their spending 
money, which surely cannot be a large 
amount. One of these young men, the 
older one, had been troubled by a cough 
and weakness for some time, together with 
some slight hemorrhages, and, upon ex- 
amination, it proved that he was rather an 
advanced case of pulmonary tuberculosis. 
Some examinations of the other young 
men showed that this condition was not 
uncommon in the College, and a following 
extract from one of the recent letters 
from the Doctor bears somewhat on the 
subject. 

It should be remembered that while Dr. 
Stone does all that she can for the young 
men of this Christian School and College 
she cannot by any means do all that she 
wants, and her visitor during the few days 
of the stay there made a physical examina- 
tion of quite a number of the young men 
and found that a good many of them 
needed special attention, but at the time 
when It was necessary to come away there 
were still some thirty young fellows who 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 67 

wanted to be examined and felt In need of 
It, and yet the time did not permit. 

Perhaps it is the stress of the surround- 
ing heathen world and the very different 
sentiment which pervades the neighbor- 
hood on all matters that brings a unity and 
harmony into the College which, if one 
may judge on a rather superficial acquaint- 
ance, exceeds that which one finds else- 
where. There appears to be a great deal 
of good feeling among the students. One 
scarcely needs to remark on the courtesy 
with which one is received, that Is rather 
universal whether in a Christian Chinese 
atmosphere or no. 

The girls, who live In a separate com- 
pound which adjoins that of the young 
men, come filing Into the church used by 
both schools two by two, and make their 
exit In the same way, before the young 
men are allowed to go out. The monthly 
Epworth League meeting, which comes on 
a week day night and rather more resem- 
bles what we should call a "social" meet- 
ing than a religious one — although, In- 
deed, hymns are sung — gives some little 



68 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

chance for the young men and young girls 
to know one another at least by sight. I 
attended one of these meetings and was 
extremely interested in hearing the young 
girls sing and give recitations and to hear 
two of the young men debate before some 
judges, and, in fact, all the young men and 
young girls were judges. 

These speeches by the two contestants 
were greeted with laughter and applause 
and it sounded very much like debates in 
this country. The judges' decision was 
greeted with applause and evidently satis- 
fied the audience. The debate was for 
and against "The Reality of Omens," 
which was decided against their value. It 
seemed appropriate that the young man 
who supported the more benighted belief 
should have chosen the Classical Chinese 
for his address; a language so unfamiliar 
to his audience that many of them could 
not understand parts of what he said and 
he himself had much difficulty in remem- 
bering his debate. Like the omens them- 
selves, this style of language is becoming 
less and less useful as the old form of ex- 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 69 

aminations, on the Classics only, is a 
thing of the past. That particular kind 
of classical vocabulary is difficult even for 
the Chinese themselves, and the phrases 
are unintelligible until duly explained and 
carefully learned. It is true that the 
Classics are still taught in all schools, even 
the Mission Schools, and form, by right, a 
part of the Chinese education, but they 
are taking more and more a second place 
In the light of more useful and practical 
things. 

On each occasion when nightfall over- 
took the visiting physician on the college 
campus, at some distance from the hospi- 
tal, the Little Doctor, despite the multi- 
tude of other matters pressing, never 
failed to send over one of the faithful 
coolies from the compound with a lantern 
as escort along the dark streets toward 
the hospital. The Doctor has what Is 
nothing short of a talent for detail, as one 
may judge from the fact that her activities 
Include besides the care of the hospital, 
with Its six hundred In patients a year and 
many skillfully performed operations — 



70 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

even to ordering her own drugs from 
Shanghai — the extra burden of the dispen- 
sary with its fourteen to fifteen thousand 
annual calls, and in addition to conducting 
a home and caring for four boys — clothes, 
education, ailments, discipline, and all — 
the responsibility in good part of three 
schools, one, a most important school. The 
Knowles Bible Training School, which 
does supply and is to supply evangelistic 
workers. And, one may add to all this, a 
general supervision of the fine new build- 
ings of the last-named school which are 
under construction, and the writing of 
many letters. And with all this the Lit- 
tle Doctor is the soul of geniality and 
the well merited exhortation "Quaisi, 
Quaisi!" (Hurry, Hurry!) to some slow- 
moving Chinese is said so kindly or geni- 
ally that nobody has an excuse for feeling 
hurt. 

It is doubtless true of most medical 
work that its variety lends Interest and 
prevents monotony even to long periods of 
work, but something more than just the 
different experiences must enter into one's 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 71 

heart and life to make one ready to take, 
as Dr. Stone has done, years of consecu- 
tive work, without so much as a week's 
holiday, and no one who works with her 
even for a short time will fail to recognize 
that that source of energy is hers accord- 
ing to the promise: "They that wait on 
the Lord shall renew their strength." At 
the time of Dr. Stone's own illness, some 
five years ago, when she was confined to 
her bed with appendicitis, the outlook was 
bad should she stay in Kiukiang, for the 
people in their eagerness to be helped or 
to have their children helped, could not be 
kept out of her own home, and the women 
would come in with their little sick babies 
and find their way up the back stairs and 
into the sick room where the Doctor lay, 
and so, on all accounts, it was necessary 
that there should be the operation and con- 
valescence somewhere where the burden 
of the work would be taken off her heart. 
So the trip to America with its time of 
sickness and recovery had also some small 
periods of rest before the Doctor resumed 
her work in China again. And now, the 



72 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

work goes on with still more demands 
than before. 

One rather strenuous day stands out es- 
pecially in my mind. We had operated 
most of the morning, with dispensary 
work thrown in, and operated for a long 
time in the afternoon again. 

The afternoon case was unusually criti- 
cal, and the patient, a little baby in a dying 
condition already, nearly succumbed on 
the table, but was put in a little basket like 
a cradle whose foot was raised in order 
to sink the head and there it lay recuperat- 
ing. The head operating nurse and most 
competent caretaker was given charge of 
the case, and it may be stated here that, 
according to latest reports, the child, who 
has been named Strong Grace, is still 
alive. The father of the child tried to 
show his appreciation for my share in the 
operation by giving me the next day a cold 
boiled sweet potato, and the mother found 
expression to her feelings a couple of days 
later by entering the operating room 
where we were preparing for an operation 
and going down on her knees on the floor 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 73 

before the visiting physician, much to his 
embarrassment, be it said, since explana- 
tions were hopeless. The situation was re- 
lieved by the Little Doctor, who explained 
to the woman that we never get on our 
knees to people, but only to God. 

We went back to the house to dinner 
and had laid down the responsibility of 
the day's work, and entered with our host- 
ess into her atmosphere of most delight- 
ful sociability. One would think when 
the day's work is over that there never 
had been anything of responsibility to 
weigh on her powers of solving problems. 
Dinner was hardly more than well begun 
before a messenger came to say that there 
were some cases of very severe sickness 
that had just arrived at the hospital. We 
hurried across the lawn and through the 
corridor, and I can not forget the sight of 
the reception hall where these sick people 
and their friends were gathered in a 
rather confused group, those who were 
suffering being too ill to stand. It ap- 
peared that there were six cases of pto- 
maine poisoning. A river steamer, on its 



74 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

way up the Yang Tze, had stopped at 
Wu Hu, where some of the native pas- 
sengers had bought some shell fish which 
they had eaten and which had caused seri- 
ous illness shortly afterwards. One of 
them died before the steamer reached Kiu- 
kiang, and the rest were brought in chairs 
to the hospital door for help. Two had 
already been carried up stairs and laid 
upon beds, and the remaining four were 
helped up to private rooms, the Doctor re- 
marking to me, with a touch of amuse- 
ment, that whereas her hospital had been 
for women and children, it was turning 
into a "general hospital," two of the pa- 
tients being men. We worked for some 
time on behalf of the newcomers, and 
though one more case developed the next 
morning all seven recovered. Four of 
them were native preachers and their 
wives returning from Conference at Nan- 
king on their way to the Nan Ch'ang Dis- 
trict. 

When we could return to finish dinner, 
it was quite late and when the time to re- 
tire came it was not to be for a long rest 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 75 

for the Doctor, for the youngest of her 
little charges, Wesley Mei, had rather a 
bad attack of coughing in the early morn- 
ing, starting about 3 o'clock, and the Doc- 
tor was up with him and did not get to 
sleep again, and so began the next strenu- 
ous day with its many appeals and many 
suffering dispensary patients and its many 
decisions to make. 

Apropos of decisions, one of the most 
remarkable traits of Dr. Stone is her abil- 
ity to make decisions rapidly and the abil- 
ity not to question them when made. It 
seemed to me for some time that the secret 
of finishing so much work in a day was 
due rather to this one fact of making these 
decisions and then not reviewing them 
afterwards, leaving them behind and un- 
changed just by will power, but a little 
longer familiarity with her mode of 
thought suggested, I think, a truer solu- 
tion, namely, that her thought is so en- 
tirely unselfish and guided by a higher wis- 
dom that the decisions which are made are 
made correctly and not arbitrarily disposed 
of. The same American woman of wide 



76 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

experience referred to above has said of 
the Little Doctor that she is the most 
"selfless" woman she ever knew; and that, 
of course, is quite without a thought of 
a lack of personality, for that is most 
marked, but rather that she has the secret 
of unselfishness which is always to be 
thinking of somebody else. 

When the preachers and their wives of 
the Nan Ch'ang District were quite well 
again we were invited with them to a Chi- 
nese feast served in true Chinese style in 
the room that is fitted with the native dec- 
orations in the home. It appears that the 
place of honor at a Chinese table, which 
is set without a cloth, is at such a point 
that the grain of the wood does not run 
toward one. This is a fine point which 
we should not have noticed had not our 
attention been called to it. The feast 
was served in bowls at the centre of the 
table, and all ate with chop sticks, the hon- 
ored guest being the first to help herself 
from the central bowl. The Magistrate's 
wife, mentioned more in detail later, was 
one of the party, and this was indeed a con- 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 77 

cession on her part to the Christian notion 
of fellowship, for, in China, in the true 
Chinese style, to have gentlemen and 
ladies dine together is perfectly impossible. 
Two of this party at table found some dif- 
ficulty in wielding chop sticks and were 
helped with a good deal of courtesy and 
without undue merriment by their Chinese 
neighbors at table. Another of the guests 
was the District Superintendent of the 
Nan Ch'ang District, who also was on his 
way back to his charge from the Nanking 
Conference. 

The social gifts of our hostess were in- 
deed put to the test at this function, and 
it is still rather incomprehensible to me 
how the Doctor could act as interpreter 
for two sets of conversations, that between 
my mother and her neighbor and between 
myself and my neighbors, and yet keep 
on talking most affably with all the party, 
and when the meal was over it was not 
with a sensation on our part, that there 
had been much of a barrier of language 
between us and our friends. The same 
facility of acting as a medium of com- 



78 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

» 

munication was constantly observable, or 
rather almost unobservable, and both in 
speaking in public and in the hospital 
work the matter of the difference of lan- 
guage shrunk to a very small factor, in- 
deed. 

One opportunity to speak to a Chinese 
audience was at the Rulison High School 
where the bright and interested looking 
young girls gather each morning for their 
chapel service. Among these is a child 
who was stabbed by her mother-in-law and 
thrown out to die. Before going out to 
China this incident had been reported here 
in this country, and I expected to see at 
least a girl of 15 or 1 6, and was surprised 
when a mere child responded to Dr. 
Stone's request that she should stay after 
the rest went out. Another child who 
stayed had been the slave of a woman in 
Kiukiang, and had been so terribly beaten 
by her mistress that her back was all lac- 
erated. In perfect despair the child ran 
away, not knowing where to go, fright- 
ened at everything and afraid of every- 
body. Dr Stone was starting out in her 



'A Glimpse of the Heart of China 79 

chair on some call when she saw the child 
at one of the angles of the street crying 
bitterly. She stopped her chair and got 
out to Investigate. The bystanders hadn't 
much to tell, but Dr. Stone managed to 
get at some of the facts, saw that the child 
was in need of medical care and Invited 
her to go back to the hospital with her. 
The frightened little girl refused, having 
no confidence In anyone, but the bystand- 
ers told her to go along with Shii-Ee-Sen, 
that she would then be well ofF, So the 
child went back to the hospital, and subse- 
quently, upon being healed, went to the 
Rullson High School, her mistress being 
more willing to forego the possession of 
her slave than show her identity by claim- 
ing her again. This Is by no means a 
unique Instance. 

One day a man brought a little girl to 
the hospital who was In a very neglected 
condition, among other things her hand 
was infected with tuberculosis so that one 
or two of the bones had to be removed. 
Dr. Stone asked the man whether the 
little girl was his slave, to which he replied 



8o A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

that she was not. Not long afterward, 
and while the child was still in the hos- 
pital, a native woman came and visited the 
wards and, with boundless joy, recognized 
and claimed in the child her own little girl. 
It appeared that the father was a slave 
of the opium habit, and that one day, while 
the mother was working, he had taken his 
own little girl, and hers, and sold her into 
slavery to get money for more opium. It 
was true that the child did not belong to 
the man who brought her, but was the 
slave of his brother; but the child was re- 
stored to her mother again. 

When one thinks of the unfavorable 
status of even the wives in the family 
there one can form some dim conception 
of what slavery must be like; and not 
alone have the victims of this system no 
possessions, but they have not even the 
possession of a name; and it is "Slave girl, 
come here!" "Slave girl, do this!" Only 
a year and a half ago some 200 women 
and girls were sold on the streets of Kiu- 
kiang as slaves to whoever chose to come 
and buy. One reads in the chapter in the 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 8i 

"Bonnie Briar Bush" that is entitled, "His 
Mother's Sermon," how the Dominie, 
walking in the garden, treads under foot 
a rose, and one tries to fancy what his 
state of mind must have been to make him 
do a thing like that; but can one get a vi- 
sion of what darkness of heart it must be 
that can take a human life, with all its 
beauty of possibility, and crush it? 

The light of the Gospel brings quite a 
different feeling toward womanhood, and 
one of the little children in the Primary 
Department of the School connected with 
the Rulison High School has an interest- 
ing story, even though her life has ex- 
tended over but a few years thus far. A 
letter carrier, who was a Christian, found 
a little baby girl in the road who had been 
abandoned to die. It did not seem to his 
awakened conscience at all the right thing, 
so he picked up the little bundle and cast 
about in his mind what might be done. 
From his slender resources he could not 
save enough to hire a woman to take care 
of the child, so when he came by boat to 
Kiukiang he consulted with a clerk in the 



82 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

post office there who also was a Christian, 
and they decided that they would unite in 
saving sufficient to pay for the little girl's 
care. The Little Doctor heard of the 
child and took her under her own protec- 
tion, placing her as soon as she was old 
enough in this school, and now the child 
is supported by a lady in this country and 
has the name of Abbie Knowles. One 
cannot help being glad when looking at 
that exceptionally sweet-faced girl with her 
dark eyes that Abbie Knowles should have 
been found by someone whose heart the 
Lord had touched. 

One of the patients at the hospital was 
a little boy suffering from pulmonary tu- 
berculosis. He was the son of a man of 
some rank in Kiukiang, and both his 
mother, one of the guests of the Chinese 
feast, and his nurse lived In the hospital 
in order to watch over him. It was really 
touching to see the solicitude of both of 
them. His little sister, too, was one of 
the hospital inmates, although not in the 
least ill, and such a bright little mite of 
humanity as she was, scarcely over a year 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 83 

old, but noticing strangers, and, quite to 
our surprise, attracted by the looks of 
foreigners, and a number of times I have 
looked down to see this little child in the 
attitude of a Chinese woman's salutation, 
waiting to be noticed. The little boy had 
three white rabbits with him that lived in 
a box in his room and ate uncooked rice, 
or accompanied him to a lawn where he 
was wheeled up and down in a little roll- 
ing chair by his nurse. His father seemed 
to be a most pleasant and most responsive 
man. 

News has come from Kiukiang that the 
child went back to his home improved, but 
more important than that was the fact that 
his mother, not only experienced the 
breaking down of Chinese prejudices but 
entered Into the further experience, the 
consummation of all life in a true conver- 
sion; and when one considers the position 
which she held and the separation which 
the official class feel exists between them 
and others it is nothing short of a miracle 
that she should have thrown away her 
idols and her ancestral tablets, too, the 



84 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

greatest treasures of which a household 
can boast, and said to the Doctor, "I have 
just fallen in love with your Jesus." 

Many conversions have resulted from 
the faithful work and the prayers of that 
devoted band of Christians. One woman 
who went home a Christian from a long 
stay in attendance upon her little son in 
the hospital returned later bringing her 
son, and together they went through the 
hall and up the stairs into the ward and 
to the very bed upon which he had lain 
sick so long, and there they knelt together 
to thank God for his recovery. 

The ten days at Kiukiang seemed both 
long and short; long because of the va- 
riety of experiences and short because of 
all the interest and the pleasure of the 
visit. 

The last morning came much too soon, 
and with it one final operation on a very 
nice looking young fellow who had a 
growth of 12 years' development in his 
nose. This caused him no little trouble; 
it protruded at the nostril and bled every 
time his nose was touched. Naturally, the 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 85 

removal was a sanguinary affair, but one 
who saw it could not forget the instant 
thankfulness and appreciation of the pa- 
tient when the growth was removed, for, 
quite regardless of his long blue gown 
which was being drenched with blood, he 
got off his chair and went right down on 
his knees before Dr. Stone to tell his 
thankfulness to her. 

Two of the young men of the William 
Nast College were waiting for a physical 
examination below stairs, but news came 
that the boat was In, and that meant that, 
with some very hasty farewells to the 
group of Christians there, we had to take 
our leave and start for the Bund. What a 
different progress was our journey down 
from the journey up, porters there were 
to take our trunks, but the matter was 
made more easy for mother by a chair, and 
the Doctor and her youngest were also 
in a little green chair, the sparkling eyes 
of the latter looking out with the sense 
of perfect joy and serenity and safety as 
he sat ensconced inside. Somehow, the 
streets looked different, and the grace of 



86 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

our hostess had spread itself with some- 
thing of charm even over the unsightliness 
of much of it. It was different; it seemed 
more like a friendly spot. 

The somewhat irregular procession 
was escorted by some eight boys, includ- 
ing the three other "brothers" who strag- 
gled along, now in front and now behind, 
with something of a holiday air about 
them. Arrived at the Bund we went on 
board to secure our accommodations, and 
the time came for saying good-bye to the 
friend who had helped to open our eyes to 
catch a glimpse of the heart of China, as 
well as to catch something of a clearer 
vision of the Lord's love. She could not 
wait, very well, with that stress of work, 
until the boat started, and so, with her es- 
cort of small boys and Wesley, her young- 
est, sitting inside, the little green chair 
started on its way back to the hospital and 
to some of the needs of that teeming city. 
I watched it as it threaded its way among 
the crowd of venders and porters, now it 
was lost to sight through the Concession 
Gate, and now it came into view again, 




A door of hope 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 87 

but farther away, and at last it disap- 
peared among the blue clad throng along 
the Bund, and I turned away with 
the profoundest admiration and a prayer 
for His blessing on that brave heart go- 
ing back to face all that work for His 
lambs and His sheep. 



Some extracts from letters recently re- 
ceived give still a further picture of Chris- 
tian activity at Kiukiang. They are ap- 
pended. 

Nov. 22, I9IO. 

What are we going to do with these 
tubercular boys and girls? Quite a few 
more boys came after you went away, and 
it is pathetic to find some of the most 
promising ones in school are afflicted with 
it. Mr. Rowe and Mrs. Walley have 
given them a large airy room now by 
themselves. They will have fewer studies 
and better food, milk and eggs in addition, 
besides tonics — cod liver oil, iron and 

Fowler's solution. I found Miss T 's 

brother had not enough bedding; just one 
thin quilt for both mattress and cover. 
The poor boy said he could never get 
warm at night, and then towards morning 
he would be drenched in sweat and his 
88 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 89 

thin underwear would be cold on him. 
Last week I had some new cotton bed- 
ding, both for the upper and lower, and 
then had cotton flannel underwear made 
for him. 



The man you operated upon that morn- 
ing did not bleed much. They did send 
for me in a way that was not comfortable 
to say the least. The mother came knock- 
ing her head on the ground, saying that 
her son was bleeding to death. When I 
got to his home I found that a big clot 
was trying to dislodge itself. After that 
was extracted there was not a drop of 
blood. He is up and had been here for a 
tonic some days ago. By the way, he told 
me that he will never worship idols any 
more, and shall come to our church to wor- 
ship God. Anyway it will be a blessing if 
he hears the Word regularly. 

* * * 

The child's mother is a bright woman, 
and she is having the time of her life in 



90 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

the hospital. She told me the other day 
that she has learned for the first time in 
her life that idols are no good. She 
drinks in every word that we tell her of 

Jesus. 

* * * 

One sad case yet to report. The big 
school boy that you massaged in the isola- 
tion ward took his departure for his heav- 
enly home a week ago last Thursday. His 
wife was here just a week before he left. 
During that time he talked to her about 
nothing except that he wanted her to stay 
with us either in the hospital or in the 
Bible Training School. 

Did you notice the big swelling he had 
on his left hip when you massaged him? 
I had to lance him and such a quantity of 
pus as came out. Together with his bad 
lungs his strength gave out and he slept 
quietly away. He succeeded his older 
brother, who died of tuberculosis, in seven 
months. It is something terrible the way 
the heathen people wail for their dead, 
and it is worse the way friends try to com- 
fort each other. Here is a sample. The 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 91 

wife's cousin was here and what do you 
suppose she said to the wailing woman? 
She said: "Don't cry, what can you do, 
he only earned a short life from his 
former existence. You just have to sub- 
mit to your fate of pains and sufferings. 
You poor woman, you haven't a son 
even!" Such a Job's comforter! We 
hushed her up, and I am thankful to say 
that the Christian widows were used to 
bring her real sympathy and hope for the 
future. Mrs. Yea said, "I am so young, 
(only 23 years old) what is before me, 
it is so dark, and I want to commit sui- 
cide." Mrs. Mei said, "Look at me, I am 
a young widow, too, but I am happy in the 
Lord's work, and you just come and see 
what a lot of young widows we have here 
that are happy in Jesus." Mrs. Yea said, 
"But I have only had him for three 
months." Mrs. Mei said, "We have here 
a bright young worker who was married 
only one week before her husband died 
and another was left a widow at nineteen. 
We would have been desolate indeed if 
we had not found Jesus. You just try and 



92 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

see what he has in store for you." Do 
you know, Mrs. Yea was comforted, and 
she has decided to cast her lot among the 
Christians ! This may mean her bringing 
her sad young sister-in-law to school later. 
Mrs. Yea is very bright and seems so will- 
ing to learn, and the Lord may have a 
great future for her. 

To-day, Nov. 23, we had our Thanks- 
giving Day because Mrs. Rowe wanted all 
the Missionaries together for to-morrow 
so we had ours a day earlier. Last year 
we held it at the Training School, so this 
year we had it here. We issued 100 tick- 
ets in all — 50 for the old homeless women 
and fifty for the children that begged on 
the streets. We divided the whole school 
into committees so that everyone had 
something to do. Four hundred people 
sat in our yard and heard the Gospel mes- 
sage. These all had light refreshments. 
Instead of feeding the 100, as we planned 
for, 120 crowded at the twelve tables, and 
after these got through there was enough 
left for twenty more. So 140 of the very 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 93 

poor in the city had been fed. It was real 
touching the way some beggars listened to 
the women. They were in dead earnest 
as I saw them wiping tears away. They 
said, "Only Jesus's religion make people 
think of the poor." When they went away 
they said, "Jesus will bless you for this." 
The reason I am telling you this is be- 
cause I found Mrs. Yea already in smiles. 
She forgot her sorrows in helping us give 
happiness to those poor suffering people. 
You will be interested to know, too, that 
all the women, nurses and servants, even 
our little children, too, subscribed towards 

the expense. 

* * * 

Kiukiang, Jan. 10, 191 1. 
We have had a wonderful series of re- 
vival meetings. Mr. Ding of Shantung 
was the evangelist. At the close of the 
meeting 56 boys from the college, 59 girls 
from the high school, not counting the 
men in the Theological School or the wom- 
en from the Bible Training School, vol- 
unteered to devote their lives to evangelis- 



94 A Glimpse of the Heart of China 

tic work. Mr. Ding is a fine student of 
the Bible. Perhaps you will be interested 
in his report of the last nine months of 
work. He worked in i6 churches, visited 
35 schools, secured as future evangelistic 
workers 344 men and 344 women. One 
thousand persons have joined the church 
on probation. The Lord has certainly 
blessed his efforts In our midst. 

So many things have happened since 
you left us. On the night of Dec. ist the 
beautiful Baldwin Memorial High School 
at Nan Ch'ang was burned down by fire. 
Miss Honsinger had a new fire-place, evi- 
dently not properly built, in her study. It 
is supposed that the joist supporting the 
stone that held the burning coal caught 
fire. Everything was lost. Miss Hon- 
singer dashed out in her night gown, and 
Miss Tang a minute later had to escape 
by means of a rope from the third story. 
Fortunately no life was lost. Miss Muir 
was away itinerating on the district which 
was also a fortunate thing for her. Miss 
Honsinger sails for America to-day on the 
"Siberia" with Miss Merrill and Miss 



A Glimpse of the Heart of China 95 

Nieh (the high school teacher that you 

met here). 

* * * 

By the way, the young woman that had 
hysteria while you were here has not been 
allowed to return to school yet. A neigh- 
bor of hers tells me that she remains true 
to Jesus, and In spite of persecutions at 
home, beatings from her husband and 
mother-in-law at times, she steadily re- 
fuses to join In the Idol worship. My sis- 
ter-in-law Is going to see her again before 
Chinese New Year when her faith will be 
put strongly to the test and she will be in 
great need of prayers. 



NOV 10 1911 



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